Well, I'm not a lawyer and english is not my natural language. By these facts, my comment will not have the quality I'd like it to have.
I've followed the W3C standards since the publication of HTML 3.2, encouraging fellows and the enterprises for whom I worked to do so, and proud of the W3C way of development and distribution of these standards. This is: openness.
Now, the possibility of closed, patented standards shows to me in the horizon, and that scares me.
Scares me because the last word between the famous Microsoft-Netscape battle was "follow the standard". But if the standard contains a Microsoft or Netscape patent, it will not be fair.
W3C is powered by the industry and collaborates with it, but it's not an industry member by itself. If the patent policy becomes a reality, the people will not see the W3C standards as a fair balance.
In the other hand, I prefer not to be forced to pay royalties in the development of my works. It feels insane that the "good" way of streaming a video will be the Apple/Microsoft/Real Networks way just because one of them is present in the working draft team.
I completely share the opinion of:
The WaSP in their open letter: http://www.webstandards.org/opinion.html
Alan Cox in LinuxToday: http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-09-30-010-20-OP-CY
Thank you for all your work to make the world wide web be. And quoting The Beatles: Let it be.
Ignacio
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Ignacio Torres Masdeu <itorres@darkheavy.net> http://darkheavy.net
FidoNet: 2:341/14.78
"...never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee"
-- John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, 1621